THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 533 



thought"; and having reached it, he had no alternative but to 

 judge it true and pronounce it to the world. 



But the fate of the principle of variations with natural selec- 

 tion had the reception which shows that good judgment may rise 

 higher than the level of its own social origin. Even yet the prin- 

 ciple of Darwin is but a spreading ferment in many spheres of 

 human thought in which it is destined to bring the same revolu- 

 tion that it has worked in the sciences of organic life. And it 

 was not until other men, who had both authority with the pub- 

 lic and information enough to follow Darwin's thought, seconded 

 his judgment, that his great formula began to have currency in 

 scientific circles. 



Now I ask. Does not any theory of man which loses sight of 

 the supreme sanity of Darwin, and with him of Aristotle, and 

 Angelo, and Leonardo, and Newton, and Leibnitz, and Shake- 

 speare, seem weak and paltry ? Do not delicacy of sentiment, 

 brilliancy of wit, fineness of rhythmical and aesthetic sense, the 

 beautiful contributions of the talented special performer, sink 

 into something like apologies — something even like profanation 

 of that name to conjure by, the name of genius ? And all the 

 more if the profanation is made real by the moral irregularities 

 or the social shortcomings which give some color of justification 

 to the appellation " degenerate." But, on the other hand, why run 

 to the other extreme and make this most supremely human of all 

 men an anomaly, a prodigy, a bolt from the blue, an element of 

 extreme disorder, born to further or to distract the progress of 

 humanity by a chance which no man can estimate ? The re- 

 sources of psychological theory are adequate, as I have endeav- 

 ored to show, to the construction of a doctrine of society which 

 is based upon the individual, in all the possibilities of variation 

 which his heredity may bring forth, and which yet does not hide 

 or veil those heights of human greatness on which the halo of 

 genius is wont to rest. Let us add knowledge to our surprise in 

 the presence of such a man, and respect to our knowledge, and 

 worship, if you please, to our respect, and with it all we then 

 begin to see that because of him the world is the better place for 

 us to live and work in. 



We find that, after all, we may be social philosophers and hero- 

 worshipers as well. And by being philosophers we have made 

 our worship more an act of tribute to human nature. The 

 heathen who bows in apprehension or awe before the image of 

 an unknown god may be rendering all the worship he knows ; 

 but the soul that finds its divinity by knowledge and love has 

 communion of another kind. So the worship which many render 

 to the unexplained, the fantastic, the cataclysmal, this is the awe 

 that is born of ignorance. Given a philosophy that brings the 



